Ship Breakers of Bangladesh

The countries that are in the west are dumping their old ships onto shores in the east, in poor countries that can not afford to causing many negative environmental impacts, but providing many jobs for men in Bangladesh.

Countries such as Britain and
other privileged countries are
throwing away their old ships
onto the shores of poor
countries such as Bangladesh.

Subtopic

This is an issue all around. It mainly starts as being an issue in just Bangladesh but it then becomes much larger than that. There is a lot of toxic substances that are left behind from the ships will end up leaching into the waterways for the country ruining their drinking source. They can also get into the oceans/lakes that they are arriving by causing a depletion of clean, safe water causing harm to fish, birds, and other animals and plants that use that water to survive.

They send the old ships to countries such as Bangladesh because by doing so, they aren't having to pay people from their own countries to break them down. They are also helping the people of Bangladesh out by providing jobs for about 30000 men and also providing many objects to sell in markets (eg. toilets, sinks, books, etc), and providing metal for buildings there.

Economic Perspectives
The workers here are not
treated well and they are
barely paid anything. Most
are being paid $1 a day
which is not enough to get
by. Most families have to
send out their children to
work as well because they
can not afford to have only
one or two incomes. Some
of the boys that are working
there started out working
there as young as 12 years
old. Bangladesh is one of
the poorest countries in the
world, so their dollar is low,
and it is very difficult to find
work and to make enough
money to get by.

Environmental Perspectives
As the workers proceed to dismantle all of these ships, there is a lot of toxins getting into the water which potentially can kill many people, animals, and plants. They are not doing anything to try and prevent the spillage of these contaminants because they can not afford to. There is also probably a lot of air pollution that is happening from when they are melting all of the metal into rods. Although they are recycling the metal, they are not necessarily doing it in an environmentally friendly way. There are activists who are trying to stand up against this industry because of how negative the impact is on the environment, but the government is basically just kicking them to the curb saying "caring about the environment is a first world problem and we do not need to worry about that over here".

Political Perspectives
The workers who are dismantling the ships do not really have a say in how things are done. I think they would all prefer it if they had some safety equipment to help prevent them being hurt. They also should be getting paid more than $1 a day but the government is barely paying them at all, as long as the work gets done, they could care less.

Social/Cultural Perspectives
The workers who are dismantling the ships work as a team to get a large amount of work done in as little time as possible. They work very efficiently and as a team to take down large ships. There is one man who is in charge of buying the ships, and he has become very wealthy since doing so. He buys many large ships that are no longer in use and he gets them beached onto the shore, where the men then go ahead and start working away at dismantling them. There are no unions or anything, and the only person that it said was in charge was the Peace, Hope, and Prosperity man.